It seems around the world protesters are considered terrorists now so it is likely that one of these days they'll try to round up a bunch of protesters in the US and ship them off to a permanent detention, camp or whatever with no questions asked. At least, all the new laws the government is passing makes this possible whether is sounds ridiculous or not.

There's a website called CredoAction.com that helps to fight the injustices that are going on around us. When I'm in agreement with an issues they promote I sign the petition and am included in a large group of people who are collectively sending a message.

By going to CredoAction, you can participate by signing petitions that are sent directly to government representatives including the President of the US.

And they've been very effective in getting the message to Washington DC as several bills and policies that I can think of have been delayed, stopped or changed due to the pro-activity that CredoAction helps to organize.

This matter of indefinite detention is their latest campaign.

The petition reads:

"Indefinite detention without charge or trial is fundamentally contrary to the democratic values that our system of government rests upon. The recent law that authorizes the indefinite military detention of American citizens is an outrage and must be rolled back. Additionally, the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, which continue to be a dark spot on our national conscience, should be closed."

Click here to see the petition. If you're inclined to sign it please do so.

skynet wrote:It seems around the world protesters are considered terrorists now so it is likely that one of these days they'll try to round up a bunch of protesters in the US and ship them off to a permanent detention, camp or whatever with no questions asked.

Why is that "likely?" I understand it could happen, and I'm not defending any weird or crazy laws, but I don't understand why that scenario is "likely" to happen. I think that's kind of just a huge assumption with no real factual backing...

There are already a huge number of insane laws in place, but the government doesn't take them to some extreme measure except in very, VERY rare circumstances. Again, not defending anything here, I'm just saying let's keep it fair.

Oh strange, I didn't expect anyone to reply to what I said. I usually just type whatever random stuff that comes to mind. Just jokin, but at the same time I don't monitor every word on the forums and sometimes it may not come out right.

Maybe likely was too strong? How about possible instead? Or not an impossibility? To me it actually seems ridiculous that I'd have to form a sentence to describe that kind of situation.

When you look at what's currently happening, or as conflicts and tensions escalate to the kind of thing we are seeing, you could presume all one needs is an excuse, even if fabricated, to use the laws that are in place. The protests are probably going to get a lot more intense and widespread this year unless we have some dramatic changes (and that kind of change wont happen any time soon). OWS (and other similar movements) is not slowing down and in fact is turning into something very permanent. The bigger OWS gets the more likely something is going to happen. OWS is already a lot bigger than most people think because the media purposely hasn't covered it all that much.

Ultimately it should never be a matter of whether NDAA is used or not. It shouldn't exist. But as you watch things develop you can see how these kind of laws are being created and put there for a reason.

Oh okay, well that I can agree with for the most part. I guess I've been around too many forums where some people think with every given law that's the end of modern civilization as we know it and we're now in a dictatorship.

Actually I have a friend who's like that. Any time he hears ANYTHING about a police officer doing something wrong or something he jumps on it as "an example of how society is." Well, that one guy, yeah, but there are like 2 million police officers who AREN'T corrupt and are protecting people...

No problem. No misunderstanding. It's just a little tuning in on the matter. I'm always trying to check on myself (as well as other people if necessary). When someone asks me about something I said the first thing I do is make sure I absolutely meant it or possibly not. Sometimes it's a rant with extremes and other times it's to the point of something.

I agree with you as far as there's a larger part of law enforcement that's out to protect people. This is probably why a lot of these kinds of laws will fail. The police and the military would mostly likely not attack their own people. The question is, who would they be protecting if they "attack" the people they are suppose to be protecting?

I spent four hours in a third-floor conference room at 86 Chambers St. in Manhattan on Friday as I underwent a government deposition. Benjamin H. Torrance, an assistant U.S. attorney, carried out the questioning as part of the government’s effort to decide whether it will challenge my standing as a plaintiff in the lawsuit I have brought with others against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), also known as the Homeland Battlefield Bill.

The NDAA implodes our most cherished constitutional protections. It permits the military to function on U.S. soil as a civilian law enforcement agency. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to selectively suspend due process and habeas corpus for citizens. The law can be used to detain people deemed threats to national security, including dissidents whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, and hold them until what is termed “the end of the hostilities.” Even the name itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian concept that endless war has to be waged within “the homeland” against internal enemies as well as foreign enemies.

Judge Katherine B. Forrest, in a session starting at 9 a.m. Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, will determine if I have standing and if the case can go forward. The attorneys handling my case, Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, will ask, if I am granted standing, for a temporary injunction against the Homeland Battlefield Bill. An injunction would, in effect, nullify the law and set into motion a fierce duel between two very unequal adversaries—on the one hand, the U.S. government and, on the other, myself, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, the Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir and three other activists and journalists. All have joined me as plaintiffs and begun to mobilize resistance to the law through groups such as Stop NDAA.

The deposition was, as these things go, conducted civilly. Afran and Mayer, the attorneys bringing the suit on my behalf, were present. I was asked detailed questions by Torrance about my interpretation of Section 1021 and Section 1022 of the NDAA. I was asked about my relationships and contacts with groups on the U.S. State Department terrorism list. I was asked about my specific conflicts with the U.S. government when I was a foreign correspondent, a period in which I reported from El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Middle East, the Balkans and other places. And I was asked how the NDAA law had impeded my work.

It is in conference rooms like this one, where attorneys speak in the arcane and formal language of legal statutes, that we lose or save our civil liberties. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act, the employment of the Espionage Act by the Obama White House against six suspected whistle-blowers and leakers, and the Homeland Battlefield Bill have crippled the work of investigative reporters in every major newsroom in the country. Government sources that once provided information to counter official narratives and lies have largely severed contact with the press. They are acutely aware that there is no longer any legal protection for those who dissent or who expose the crimes of state. The NDAA threw in a new and dangerous component that permits the government not only to silence journalists but imprison them and deny them due process because they "substantially supported" terrorist groups or "associated forces."

Those of us who reach out to groups opposed to the U.S. in order to explain them to the American public will not be differentiated from terrorists under this law. I know how vicious the government can be when it feels challenged by the press. I covered the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua from 1983 to 1988. Press members who reported on the massacres and atrocities committed by the Salvadoran military, as well as atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed Contra forces in Nicaragua, were repeatedly denounced by senior officials in the Reagan administration as fellow travelers and supporters of El Salvador’s Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) rebels or the leftist Sandinista government in Managua, Nicaragua.

The Reagan White House, in one example, set up an internal program to distort information and intimidate and attack those of us in the region who wrote articles that countered the official narrative. The program was called “public diplomacy.” Walter Raymond Jr., a veteran CIA propagandist, ran it. The goal of the program was to manage “perceptions” about the wars in Central America among the public. That management included aggressive efforts to destroy the careers of reporters who were not compliant by branding them as communists or communist sympathizers. If the power to lock us up indefinitely without legal representation had been in the hands of Elliott Abrams or Oliver North or Raymond, he surely would have used it.

Congressmen Adam Smith and Justin Amash will put forth an amendment to make it clear that the military does not have the power to arrest and indefinitely detain civilians without charging or trying them.

Please urge your lawmakers to support their efforts and help us spread word far and wide.

The timing couldn't be any better: As Congress gets ready to vote on indefinite detention today, a judge just ruled that these provisions of last year's National Defense Authorization Act are unconstitutional!

Congratulations to Chris Hedges and Revolution Truth -- who spearheaded the lawsuit -- and to the 50,000 Demand Progress members who signed on as grassroots supporters of the effort.

It's a huge victory, but we need to keep pushing Congress to do the right thing too: The government is likely to appeal the court's ruling, so we have to make sure we beat back indefinite detention during today's vote.